Marria Pooya is the managing partner at Greenwich Medical Skincare and Laser Spa in Old Greenwich, Conn. The business is planning to move to the Riverside Commons shopping mall in early August. With the new location, the company will have more rooms and will expanded its retail footprint. Photographed on Tuesday, July 15, 2014.

Marria Pooya is the managing partner at Greenwich Medical Skincare and Laser Spa in Old Greenwich, Conn. The business is planning to move to the Riverside Commons shopping mall in early August. With the new location, the company will have more rooms and will expanded its retail footprint. Photographed on Tuesday, July 15, 2014.

After nine years at 1345 E. Putnam Avenue, The Greenwich Medical Skincare and Laser Spa will move down the road to a brand new building in Riverside Commons.

The skin care facility will occupy two-thirds of the space at 1233 E. Putnam Ave., expanding its footprint from 1,700 to 2,500 square feet starting on or around Aug. 11.

"I've been eyeing that space since the day that I moved here nine years ago," said Marria Pooya, the medical spa's managing partner.

Verizon Wireless will take over the building's remaining third.

The medical spa's new home will have 700 square feet of retail space for skin care, makeup and novelty health and beauty items, Pooya said. The number of treatment rooms will grow from four to seven. And there will be a new acne clinic as well as a lunch room for public skin care seminars over tea and sandwiches.

"A lot of people don't know some of these treatments or what the difference is between Botox and dermal treatment," said Pooya, a 42-year-old ex-Wall Street analyst who lives with her husband and two children in Westport. "A lot of people don't know how to take care of their skin. Teens with acne oftentimes don't know how to take care of their skin using a more holistic approach. So we want to help inform people whether they're our clients or not."

Pooya said she plans to hire four new employees with help from an $80,000 grant from the state Department of Economic and Community Development. The state also awarded her a $300,000 loan to finance the build-out, she said.

"I think the new space is just going to give us such great energy," she said. "We have done really well and the new space is a great place to celebrate that and I think it will help take us to the next level."

The medical spa offers a host of beauty, skin and body treatments. The most sought-after treatments are Botox, a muscle relaxant that removes wrinkles, and Ultherapy, a noninvasive skin tightening technology, Pooya said. She describes the majority of her clients as middle-aged moms interested in nonsurgical treatments geared at age management.

"Our average client is a 42-year-old woman who has kids, who is middle- to upper-income and who wants to look better and refreshed but isn't ready for the more invasive treatments," Pooya said. "We do have male clients, and we've been getting more and more of them in the last year and a half, especially for CoolSculpting."

"It's for people who diet and exercise but have little bulges that diet and exercise won't remove," she explained.

Pooya said the success of her business is much more sweet due to the fact that it got to a rather sour start. In 2005, she opened the business as Radience Medical Spa, a franchise she bought under the belief that it came with a large and loyal contingent of clients.

"Turns out the franchiser was a crook and there were no clients," Pooya said. "We thought we had a client base and we had nothing. But for me, failure wasn't an option, so we started with grassroots marketing and banging on doors."

In that first year, Pooya said the business made $18,000. She said she sued the franchiser, changed the name of the business to its current title and stayed afloat only because she and her family were able to live off her husband's income.

"We are very successful right now, but there were nights I couldn't sleep thinking, `How are we going to pay the bills?' "

But with hard work and innovation, Pooya, a native of Afghanistan who moved to Long Island, N.Y., at age 9, said she was able to rebound and expand.

"Owning your business just gives you so much freedom and confidence, especially as a woman," Pooya said. "It's great and I'm proud of our success."